What you eat

I just finished reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, which I understand everyone else read about four years ago when it was popular, but still, I have things to say about it. If you haven't read it, it is actually a worthwhile read in many places, and definitely not as slow as typical non-fiction. Schlosser is a writer for Atlantic Monthly and does know how to write in a straightforward and intelligently compelling manner. On the other hand, some amount does need to be filtered out through the liberalism filter if you are going to be taking away messages from the book. Lastly, several parts are not for people with weak stomachs and active imaginations.

These disclaimers aside, the main point of the book is obviously to point out the bad practices either directly within the fast food industry, franchising for instance, necessitated by the fast food industry, meat packing conditions, or as a result of the fast food industry, such as obesity. While I heard his messages on these topics, I was actually more disturbed by his statistics on what Americans are choosing to eat. The average American is eating 3 hamburgers and 4 orders of french fries in a given week. When I think about the fact that I never eat hamburgers and eat french fries on the order of once a month, this means there must be an anti-me in the country who is eating 6 hamburgers and 8 orders of fries every week. Someone is knowingly and willingly putting their digestive system and their heart through a lot of scary food. You can blame advertising all you want, there's still something wrong with a society where someone will do this to themselves no matter how sexy or popular it looks on TV.

Although there are plenty of other statistics that make me uncomfortable with the society in which we live (90% of US children eat at a McDonalds every month, the average American drinks 56 gallons of soda a year), the most distressing one was that 90% of the food we eat is processed. Being a health-conscious person, it got me thinking about what I eat on an average day. I don't know what their definition of processed is, but I have to assume it means something not in a form you get from the earth. With that in mind, I had eggs with onions and (processed) salsa cooked in (processed) butter for breakfast this morning along with (processed) soy bacon. Most days I have a (processed) peanut butter and honey sandwich on (processed) whole wheat bread with a (processed) fruit cup. Dinner might involve a spinach salad with (processed) parmesan cheese, (processed) olive oil, (processed) balsamic vinegar, and tomato, accompanied by a main dish like (processed) multi-grain pasta topped with (processed) tomato sauce.

90% of the food I eat may, in fact, be processed, and although I don't think all processed foods are bad for me, the book did make me question my trust in the companies that make them. How do I know they're not grinding up bugs along with the peanuts in my peanut butter? Could cow feces get into the milk supply? Was there harmful bacteria on the tomatoes they used for my pasta sauce? Overall, I was left, as I suppose the point was, feeling like the food industry in general, not just the fast food industry, cannot be trusted. I am the only one who should have control over what goes into my food, unsanitary conditions and all. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to avoid processed food, as even the basic cooking ingredients like sugar and flour are processed somewhere else; I wouldn't know how to make sugar from sugarcane if I tried. Knowing that, I suppose I will continue buying my peanut butter from Peter Pan just like everyone else, but it's never going to taste as good.

Fast Food Nation is a good book at getting its point across; I just wish that point didn't involve me questioning everything I put in my mouth.